Creating Soul From Slavery

Epic Blood On The Fields Confirms Marsalis As A Visionary Composer

February 27, 1997|By MATT SCHUDEL Jazz Columnist

Wynton Marsalis brought his epic composition, Blood on the Fields, to West Palm Beach on Tuesday, and from beginning to end it was an electrifying work of art. For three hours he and his Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, augmented by three singers, led a compelling exploration of the great American tragedy of slavery. But something more echoed in the hall of the Kravis Center: The audience knew it had witnessed something of historic proportion.

Marsalis composed his jazz oratorio for big band and voices in 1994, but only now is it getting wide exposure. The West Palm Beach performance was the final stop on a 16-city tour of North America before the ensemble goes to Europe for a short tour.

The work itself depicts the journey into slavery of an African man and woman, Jesse and Leona, tracing a path that begins in anguish and ends in hope. It has the scale and impact of an opera. From its opening strains of violence and disorder, the music follows a similar journey, steadily growing into greater refinement and beauty.

As composer and conductor, Marsalis coaxed more tone colors and textures from a 13-piece jazz orchestra (14, counting himself) than would seem possible. Handclaps, foot stomps, brass mutes, woodwind drones and even a paper ``mute'' for piano added to the complexity.

The music itself was dense and difficult _ this was nothing at all like a performance of big-band swing _ yet always remained accessible. Rhythm was the unifying element, rather than melody: Even as the music roared and bled, it still had a toe-tapping familiarity.

Singers Miles Griffith and Cassandra Wilson took the roles of Jesse and Leona. Even if it was hard to understand what Wilson was singing without the libretto (Marsalis wrote the lyrics as well as the music), her intimate, confiding contralto was one of the most effective instruments in the band. Griffith, with a full-bore declamatory style, could have benefited from a more relaxed approach.

Veteran jazz singer Jon Hendricks was warm and outgoing in the smaller part of the wise elder Juba (and, in one powerful section, as a slave buyer), stirring the crowd to a frenzy with a scat solo on a piece called Look and See.

Most of the band members had solos as well, with especially fine work from trombonists Wycliffe Gordon and Ronald Westray, trumpeter Marcus Printup, baritone saxophonist Gideon Feldstein, clarinetist Victor Goines, drummer Herlin Riley and, of course, Marsalis, whose trumpet-playing grows richer with each hearing. Perhaps the finest instrumental solo came late in the program, when violinist Regina Carter _ not credited in the program _ played a heart-stopping hymn based on Amazing Grace, followed by a hip-swaying hoedown dance piece.

All in all, this was a powerful work of clarity, coherence and depth. No one in jazz has composed a piece of such ambition and achievement since Duke Ellington. For anyone who doubted the integrity and the importance of Wynton Marsalis, it's time to stop scoffing and start believing. Blood on the Fields establishes Marsalis not just as the foremost creative force in jazz, but as one of the most important American artists in any field.

At the end of the performance, as the entire group marched off the stage to the gospel rhythm of a pair of bass clarinets, the audience burst into a spontaneous standing ovation that was almost a cathartic release. Later, after everyone had left the theater, the performers continued to play and sing backstage, as if they didn't want the music to end. No one else did, either.